Longtime Internet trade group NetCoalition is slowly shutting down its advocacy and lobbying operations after a decade of services to the technology industry. The news comes from new termination reports during the recent lobbying quarter from the three major firms that conducted D.C. business for NetCoalition (TwinLogic Strategies, Jochum Shore & Trossevin PC and Moore Consulting). Those reports state that these groups will no longer be working for the group. The lobbying firms helped spearhead some pretty important lobbying efforts that helped to fight the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

NetCoalition executive director Markham Erickson confirmed the news with The Hill, saying that the group would close its doors after it finalizes two pending legal matters in the D.C. Circuit Court. The Internet Association will replace NetCoalition.

"At the end of the day, ultimately NetCoalition will wind down and the Internet Association will take its place on the issues NetCoalition worked on," said Erickson, who will serve as the outside counsel for the Internet Association. "We have [litigation] before the D.C. Circuit, but ultimately the Internet Association will fully replace NetCoalition," he added.

NetCoalition was launched at the end of the 1990s. Some of its early members included DoubleClick, AOL, Amazon and the search engine Lycos. NetCoalition's most recent members included Yahoo, eBay, IAC, PayPal, Bloomberg, Amazon, Expedia and Google. On the plus side, all of these companies except PayPal and Bloomberg, are members of the Internet Association, along with other top companies such as Zynga, Facebook and LinkedIn.